Are you referring to a Gradient or brush in a selected area, or??...Or are you referring to placing the cursor on the point of adjustment area in one region to adjust things such as ..../color/illumination, as well as the dark/shadow/light/highlight (terms from LR modules) ?

So what do people use with DxO Optics Pro for those selective adjustments? (Suggestions other than LR, PS, PSE please.)

Hi,

Topaz Labs photoFXlab is both a stand-alone application and a PS plugin. It has several useful controls which can be applied on blending layers, and it can use the excellent Topaz Labs plugins on those individual layers. There are some tutorials here.

Photoline (mentioned in an earlier post) is another very capable program, and it allows to use PS plugins, including those from Topaz Labs.

Yes, and removing the 100' pine tree that's obscuring the sub-alpine lake, and moving bluebird sky into the top corner of a composite image that I somehow neglected to photograph (I blame it on the altitude), and...

Thanks, I actually have the demo installed but still need to install useful modules. Maybe soon, I have a couple of photos with both a near focus and a far focus which I've failed to satisfactorily merge with Enfuse or Hugin, so I'd like to add alpha masks and try again.

and, Isaac, why stop using already purchased PS product with perpetual license ? you replaced ACR/LR w/ other raw converter(s), but you still can get PS/PSE and use it w/o subscription... or you can still run old ACR on .tiff for local corrections even you do not upgrade to "CC" to get new ACRs for new cameras... not supporting Adobe (because of "CC") does not need to go that far

Topaz Labs photoFXlab is both a stand-alone application and a PS plugin. It has several useful controls which can be applied on blending layers, and it can use the excellent Topaz Labs plugins on those individual layers.

I can see how to apply various effects; and, for example, do selective sharpening using the layer masks; and it was easy enough to composite images with different WB adjustments for different foreground/background lighting etc

That's correct, but then nobody claimed that these plugins would, because they are more geared at total image enhancement, not specifically for detailed Retouch like an image pixel oriented editor. For that there are plenty of alternatives. Fortunately, most Raw converters do offer spot removal.